Clyburn: Health care reform will lower deficit

WASHINGTON -- Democrats plan to vote Sunday in the House of Representatives on a revamped health care overhaul bill aimed at insuring millions more Americans, providing more Medicare drug benefits and reducing federal budget deficits over the next 10 years.

On Thursday, President Obama canceled his Asia trip, which had been scheduled to start Sunday, so he could make a last-minute push for the 216 House votes needed to pass the most important initiative of his 14-month-old presidency.

As of early Thursday evening, Obama had met with or called more than three dozen members of Congress to try to win their support, according to White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. Gibbs declined to confirm or deny lawmakers' accounts that Obama considers the fate of his presidency at stake.

Though they appeared still short of the votes they need, House Democratic leaders were increasingly confident they'll triumph. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, whose S.C. district includes part of Georgetown County, hailed a new nonpartisan analysis showing the sweeping health care bill would cut the deficit as he tried frantically Thursday to secure votes for the bill.

Clyburn said the report by the Congressional Budget Office, which predicted the health care legislation would reduce the federal deficit by $138 billion over a decade, had helped build momentum for the vote.

"I'm very hopeful that we will stay here and cast this vote on Sunday so when we come back next week, we can start other business and do some important things we need to do in addition to health care," Clyburn said. The CBO analysis said the health care plan would extend medical coverage to 32 million currently uninsured Americans by 2019 at a cost of $940 billion.

A separate report by the House Energy and Commerce Committee said the updated health care legislation would extend new medical coverage to 493,000 mainly low-income South Carolinians and provide tax credits to an additional 1.16 million families and 92,200 small businesses to help them buy insurance.

"It's time to bring an end to insurance discrimination based on pre-existing conditions," Clyburn said. "It's time to bring an end to the fear of many Americans that if they lose their jobs or change jobs, they cannot get health coverage. It's time to do what generations before us could not accomplish - it's time to pass health insurance reform."

Rep. Gresham Barrett, a Westminster Republican who is running for governor, criticized the complicated parliamentary procedures Democrats are using to move the measure through Congress.

"While Democrats may publicly push a transparency initiative for Congress, they are still attempting to keep Americans in the dark on health care reform through closed-door processes, sweetheart deals and legislative trickery," he said.

The health care initiative's $940 billion cost over a decade would be more than offset by savings of $500 billion through cutting Medicare fraud and by new taxes on high-end "Cadillac" private insurance plans, according to the CBO.

The legislation would make historic changes to health insurance coverage, the most in decades. Insurers no longer would be able to deny coverage to anyone because of pre-existing conditions starting in 2014, and the provision would apply to children six months after enactment.

Health insurers also no longer would be able to put lifetime caps on coverage. Children would be able to stay on their parents' policies until their 26th birthdays. Most people would be required to have health insurance by 2014, and most employers would be required to offer policies.

Clyburn scurried from TV interviews to White House strategy sessions to closed-door meetings with 20 or so Democratic lawmakers who hadn't decided how to vote on the health care bill.

Thirty-nine Democrats voted against the original legislation in November when the House passed it by a 220-215 margin, most of them because of its cost or abortion funding limits they felt were too weak. The measure has been significantly changed since then.

If all 215 Republican House members vote against the bill as expected, Clyburn will need to obtain 216 Democratic votes for it to ensure passage. He said last week the tally could be closer than the November margin.

Obama joined Clyburn and other Democratic leaders in making personal pleas to the holdout Democrats. Asked by reporters where his whip count stood, Clyburn declined to provide a specific figure.

The House plans to consider the legislation in two stages Sunday, after allowing 72 hours for the new bill's provisions to be reviewed. First, it will vote on the rule governing debate - a rule that will say the health care version the Senate passed Dec. 24 is deemed passed by the House upon adoption of the rule.

If the rule is approved, the House later will vote on the changes to that Senate bill that were announced Thursday; the bill containing those changes is called a reconciliation package.

If the House approves the package, it will go to the Senate, where leaders hope to dodge procedural hurdles that Republicans are threatening, and finish the bill next week. Republicans warned they will fight hard to derail the plan.

Sen. Jim DeMint, a Greenville Republican who galvanized conservative opposition to the Democratic plan, said it would lead to a government takeover of health care.

"The president's bill will create a government-controlled insurance exchange where bureaucrats will have the power to set price controls and determine what insurance will or will not cover," DeMint wrote on his blog.

"It will create 159 new bureaucracies in the form of new programs, projects and panels."

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Seneca Republican, warned that if the measure becomes law with no Republican support, the November elections will become a referendum on health care.

Graham also predicted that no other meaningful legislation will move in Congress for the rest of the year should the Democrats succeed in pushing through partisan health care reforms.

"What they're trying to do to fix the problem is not worth it for the long-term future of the country," he said.